Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges and political philosopher Sheldon Wolin conclude their eight-part series on American democracy and corporate capitalism with conversations about the consequences of relentless totalitarianism, the nature of participatory democracy and how to think about the possibility of revolution.

If we fail to halt the state’s wholesale intrusion into our private lives, exposed by the Snowden leaks, we will find ourselves living under a ruthless totalitarian system. (At right, NSA Director Keith Alexander.)

Complex works of art lend themselves to multiple interpretations, especially where political matters are concerned. Late in 1946, American writer Dwight Macdonald asked George Orwell whether the book “ ‘Animal Farm’ … meant that revolution always ended badly for the underdog, ‘hence to hell with it and hail the status quo.’ ” In advance of the publication of a new collection of Orwell’s letters, here is the author’s response.

The dramatic recreation of the rebel artist’s 81 days in detention at the hands of the Chinese government is about how an authoritarian state maintains tenuous control over the thoughts and behavior of its citizens.

In his new book on the global surveillance machine, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and co-authors fail to give the societywide fear “of being lonely and left out” its proper credit as a driver of totalitarianism, Laurie Penny writes on New Statesman.

Austerity, attacks on democracy, the rise of extremism: The U.S. in 2012 looks eerily similar to Germany’s Weimar Republic of the late 1920s and early ’30s. Historian Robert Cruickshank registers the likeness between Germany’s pre-fascist history and what could be America’s.

“We are more than a nation in decline; we are a nation moving toward the bittersweet simplisms, policies and values of a new form of authoritarianism,” writes Henry Giroux, in an article adapted from his new book on America’s shift away from democratic values toward a rigid, market-driven uniformity.

In case it wasn’t clear from his columns, Chris Hedges is not optimistic about the state of American media and chagrined by the future of a culture in which “people don’t read anymore,” as he notes in this interview with Media Roots.

What is it going to take for concerned and engaged citizens to finally feel as though some crucial threshold has been crossed—that our nation’s political system and the global corporate culture it both serves and feeds into will never represent them or serve their needs?

Sure, Obama and McCain (well, actually their staffs) joined micro-blogging site Twitter for propaganda purposes. But now the nuke-happy and secretive North Koreans are getting in on the Web 2.0 revolution, offering an interesting state-controlled glimpse into the isolated country.

With Georgia on the U.S. mainstream media’s map after its recent war with Russia, a new interest in Georgian history and politics seems to have come to life, especially concerning the cult of personality that Stalin still leads in his native land.